Many consulting engineers will tell you that time invested in the construction phase is beyond their scope of work and, of course, the fee has been all used up and “we can’t afford to waste our time” with equipment and associated system startup.

This month and in the next three months, I will be sharing my experience pertaining to a design engineer who is responsible for the construction administration of the project he just completed the design for, with construction underway.

Reviewing documents, sizing equipment and systems, and sketching on the go: got an app for that? Also, we compare tablet vs. phone and the advantages or worries that come with taking your tablet into imperfect field conditions. How do you use yours?

After a brief hiatus, we are resuming exploration of the tablet as engineering tool. In the first article, we examined the energy study and how the tablet can facilitate tasks such as annotating existing documents, taking notes, and storing and accessing documents.

HVAC systems continue to be the most challenging part of a new construction project to get right the first time, and the most challenging parts of the HVAC systems are their controls. I believe there are two root causes.